LITMIR.BIZ

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Jac was barely a second-string bouncer at a third-rate pub. Not that long ago, the two of them had sat on street corners in the Casino District, goading passersby with games of coins and cards in the hopes of conning at least enough for a meal.

      “Vianca said there could be a repeat of the Great Street War,” Enne told him, which was the last thing she could’ve said to make him feel better. He supposed she wasn’t trying to comfort him. The clothes she’d bought weren’t gifts—they were necessities. And if daisy cufflinks were what it took to make him unrecognizable now, then he’d happily strut around town like a dandy. “If you want a motorcar to Olde Town, I can call you one.”

      Enne’s voice was level, calm, all practicality. For the first time, Jac wasn’t at all surprised that he was looking into the eyes of the person who’d killed Sedric Torren. If she was afraid, she was damn good at hiding it.

      “How did you pay for all this?” he asked her, eyeing the shopping bags with suspicion.

      “Vianca gave me the voltage.”

      “And you took it?” It was Vianca’s fault that they were in this scramble to begin with. And if they all hanged for it tomorrow, the donna would hardly deign to host their funerals.

      Enne stood up and held out two more of the bags. “Of course I did. Just like you’re going to take these.”

      He hesitated. He wanted nothing to do with Vianca, but that was impossible. So long as he was friends with Levi, so long as Levi was infatuated with Enne and they were both prisoners of the donna’s omertas... They would all be in bed with Vianca Augustine.

      “I’m really, really sorry, Jac.” Enne said it like she meant it. Then she shoved the bags into his hands. “But don’t be thick.”

      Jac took them with a weary sigh.

      “I’m going to call you a motorcar,” she told him. It wasn’t a suggestion. She walked to the other room to find the telephone, leaving him alone with Lola.

      “Bossy,” he grumbled.

      “No, she’s just the boss.” Lola clicked her tongue. “I guess I wasn’t deserving enough to be showered with expensive gifts.”

      Jac reached into one of the bags and fished out the first thing he noticed—a scrap of yellow silk with polka dots. “Here. Take this...”

      “Cravat,” Lola finished for him. “And I think I’ll leave that for you. It’ll match your wanted poster. They made you look very dapper, for some reason. Doesn’t suit that terrible scrape you’ve given yourself across your eyebrow.”

      Jac sheepishly brushed his finger over the stitches on his browbone, a souvenir from a boxing match he’d lost the other night at Dead at Dawn. His skin was still swollen and tender.

      Lola instead pulled out a black felt case and opened it to reveal a leather wristwatch. “Excellent.” She tossed the box on the armchair and buckled the watch around her bony wrist. It hung ridiculously.

      “I actually like that one,” he muttered.

      “Keep the cravat, Polka Dots.”

      Enne returned from the other room. “Jac, the car is waiting for you downstairs. It’ll take you straight to Zula’s. When you get there, can you tell Levi...” She flushed, and Jac had half a mind to crack a very lewd joke, but the other half of him wanted to roll his eyes and stalk out. They might’ve had the good sense not to let anything more happen between them, but he didn’t know why they made things so dramatic for themselves. “Tell him if he so much as opens a window before all of this has died down, I will personally turn him in and collect his bounty. Which, please remind him, is five hundred volts less than mine.”

      Jac had braced himself for something sweet and nauseating, so he wound up laughing so hard he wheezed. “With pleasure.”

      Then, without warning, Enne wrapped her arms around him in a fierce hug. “Be careful,” she told him.

      “Always am,” he managed. But Enne still looked skeptical.

      “No, you’re not.”

      He shot Lola a smile. “Now’s your chance, Dove.”

      “I don’t do hugs,” she said flatly. “Just don’t die.”

      “Words I’ll cherish forever.”

      After Enne let him go, he grabbed the bags, exchanged goodbyes, and left. He found his driver waiting for him in the alley out back. Before climbing in the car, Jac took a deep gulp of air—his first full breath since he’d entered St. Morse Casino the night before. It didn’t matter how many gifts he received or how much protection he was given; he could never bring himself to think of Vianca Augustine as anything less than despicable.

      “I’d like to make a detour,” Jac told the driver, and he gave him the address to his apartment.

      Olde Town, much like the Casino District, was quiet and still. Jac peeked from behind his window screen at the streets they passed, at the barred windows and chipped paint. The sunlight came and went as they drove, disappearing behind spires and church towers and reappearing for fleeting moments in the too-narrow alleys.

      Jac lived on a large residential street. His building was too old to have central heating or electricity, and on a day like this, he would shove his bed close to the window, drenched in sweat, and listen to his neighbors fighting down the hall while he waited for his shift to start. It wasn’t a great place, but it was far better than his last. There were no bad memories there.

      Now, his entire block was cut off with bright yellow signs, informing Olde Town residents that Genever Street was a crime scene. The car came to a slow halt, and Jac stared at the whiteboots standing outside his front steps, speaking to a neighbor of his whom he only dimly recognized. They held wanted posters in their hands.

      Have you seen this man before? they probably asked.

      Jac fiddled with his necklace. It was a Creed, a symbol of the old Faith. Jac was more superstitious than he was reverent, but it was nice, now and again, to pray for something.

      When a priest had first taught Jac to pray, he told him the prayers of a sinful conscience would go unanswered. Jac thought of the volts he’d helped Levi scam—both from the rich and from the Irons. He thought of the wounds he’d left on Chez Phillips to save Levi’s life. He thought of his own anger and resentment and desires, and the ashes left in the bottom of Enne’s teacup.

      He tried very hard to feel sorry.

      But as he stared at those yellow signs, at what all of this had led up to, he knew he wouldn’t pray for forgiveness. They could all pray for forgiveness when they escaped to a place far, far away from here, where there were no bounties on their heads, where no one knew their faces at all. A place he doubted Levi would ever willingly go.

      Or they could pray for forgiveness when they all hanged. That seemed a more likely scenario.

      But because Jac Mardlin was an unrepentant sinner who didn’t want to die, all he had left to pray for was mercy.

       LEVI

      Levi hadn’t forgiven Zula Slyk. Three days ago, he and Enne had arrived at Her Forgotten Histories, Zula’s monarchist newspaper, grasping at their last threads of hope and searching for answers about Lourdes Alfero. Bad news hurt no matter how gently you dealt it, but Zula had crafted knives out of her words, designed to bleed and infect and scar.

      And all for what? For Enne to flee to the safety of her old life in Bellamy? She bore Vianca’s omerta. She was a prisoner of the City of Sin, just like him.

      As he stepped into Her Forgotten Histories and found Zula sitting at her desk, he glared at the journalist’s serious, unfriendly face and decided he hated her.

      “Your

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